JML processes are typically quite weak in most organisations when it comes to NHIs. Our NHI Mgmt Group and a number of other organisations have conducted major research and surveys that provide a stark view of the challenges and risks around NHIs. Beyond financial theft, LLMHijacking empowers cybercriminals to scale attacks like never before. Later that month, the US Treasury announced a “major incident” as its systems were hacked as a result of this breach, with employee workstations being accessed, including some unclassified documents. Non-Complex Passwords – NHI passwords have been found to be non-complex and therefore prone to password guessing attacks. They typically have a Device MAC address, Serial Number, and GUID/UUID to identify the device. NIST compliance broadly means adhering to the NIST security standards and best practices set forth by the government agency for the protection of data… A man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack is a cyber attack in which a threat actor puts themselves in the middle of two parties, typically a user and an… Log data—from system, application, and security log files, for example—help IT staff identify technical issues, troubleshoot, improve performance, and… Analyzing automatically generated log… Hard-coded passwords, SSH keys, database connection strings, and encryption keys represent another category of non-human identity. These credentials are created by developers, automatically generated by cloud services, or embedded in self-service containers that are spawned and die in minutes. AI agents and models are rapidly becoming the most powerful and autonomous non-human actors in our systems. At a high level, NHIs differ from human identities in how they are authenticated, managed, and behave. Machine identities make up the majority of the over 12.8 million secrets GitGuardian discovered in public in 2024. Because NHIs typically operate with long-term credentials and elevated privileges, they’ve become a top target for attackers. In many organizations, non-human identities proliferate exponentially, but lack foundational security controls. From cloud platforms to DevOps pipelines, they power critical operations at machine scale. Learn the 12 PCI DSS requirements, compliance steps, PCI DSS v4.0 updates, checklist, and best practices to protect cardholder data. Scale and Visibility CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous deployment) is a collection of practices for engineering, testing, and delivering software. Understanding NoSQL Databases Before we take a closer look at the various NoSQL databases provided by AWS, let’s first understand what NoSQL databases… Your organization’s attack surface is a collection of all the external points where someone could infiltrate your corporate network. Agentless monitoring is a form of IT monitoring that does not require the installation of a software agent. Advanced threat protection is a type of cybersecurity dedicated to preventing pre-planned cyberattacks, such as malware or phishing. It consists of a database and numerous services that connect users… How non-human identities work By proactively addressing these threats with comprehensive security practices, organizations can significantly reduce the likelihood of successful attacks targeting human identities. This leads to a proliferation of identities that need to be managed, monitored, and secured, adding layers of complexity to identity management systems. A human firewall refers to employees trained to recognize and prevent cyber threats, such as phishing attacks and malware. Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) is a cybersecurity practice for identifying, investigating, and remediating cyberattacks. But they also introduce complexity, and if left unmanaged, they can become a serious risk. Definition and core function These bots are assigned non-human identities to securely access systems, databases, and applications. In my experience with enterprise security teams, I’ve seen how unmanaged machine and non-human identities – API keys, tokens, secrets, service accounts, and certificates – create silent, sprawling risks. Accountability is minimal with machine identities or AI agents capable of operating without a human in the loop for months or years. NHIs identify apps, hardware, bots, AI agents and other things within an IT ecosystem, much the same way human users have identities in a traditional identity and access management system (IAM). By reviewing access regularly, organizations can identify over-privileged accounts, revoke unused permissions, and ensure access aligns with current needs. Follow this 6-step checklist to automate your machine identity lifecycle and secure non-human identities at scale. How autonomous AI agents like OpenClaw are reshaping enterprise identity security There are likely several areas across your organization that house non-human identities using secrets that need to be managed and secured. The sheer scale of what is required to deal with the huge secrets sprawl challenge, hyper-fragmentation, etc., requires something more radical. Organisations start investing in NHI programs – We expect to see organisations increasingly seeking guidance on NHI risk management, given the increased visibility and understanding of the exposures. Tokens persist after employee departure or vendor relationship ends. Developers, engineers, and end users across the organization and broader ecosystem often create NHIs and grant them access without a deep understanding of the implications of these long-lived credentials, their level of access, and their potential exploitation by malicious actors — without the governance or involvement of security teams. Seamless integration with existing tools and workflows ensures efficient collaboration across teams, allowing for smooth, disruption-free remediation. Operational efficiency is a key benefit of managing non-human identities. Can you identify misconfigurations that require proactive mitigation, such as stale/unused and overprivileged NHIs? NHIs are rapidly proliferating in modern IT ecosystems, driven by increased reliance on microservices, DevOps practices, cloud platforms, and artificial intelligence (AI). These identities enable machines, workloads, or services to authenticate and interact with other systems securely. To control resource access, these identities are tied to people and managed through usernames, passwords, and multi-factor authentication (MFA). Consider an automated backup service that automatically copies a company’s sensitive data to a secure https://www.homeofamazing.com/what-are-the-best-smart-home-hubs-for-connectivity/ cloud storage system every night. In an IT environment, a nonhuman identity (NHI) is a digital identity attached to a bot, AI agent, app, service, workload, device or other nonhuman user. In the wake of the Salesloft breach, we’re offering a free risk assessment of your Salesforce environment to help identify potential exposure. Request a demo to see the non-human identities in your environment that
